Every week when mining the Internet for quotable gold, I stumble across myriad opinions and discussions that when boiled down to their core essence reveal themselves to be fairly petty. Fortunately, that’s not what I link to this week. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
“*Civil War* and I are no longer on speaking terms.”
- fellow Blog@ contributor Kevin Melrose, honing a fine rendition of faux petty
“Children loved most the very comics that [Frederic] Wertham and his ilk thought were especially harmful, in part because these comics possessed the true unruly spirit of youth. The childish imagination is nurtured not just by wholesome and didactic stories, but also by tales of bloodshed and vengeance, which bring good and evil vividly to life. Children need monsters and ghouls just as surely as they require parents and teachers.”
- Jeet Heer, looking back at 1950s America, when it clearly was not a simpler time, in his review of David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America
“Finally, near the end of this volume, she gets some assistance. Fuku forces some self-help books into her hands. This would have happened halfway through book two in an American series; we do love our improvement best sellers. Just buying them makes some people feel better, whether or not they ever open them.”
- Johanna Draper Carlson, reminding me to read her reviews (even when it’s not a book that sparks my interest) for gems of insight like that one.
“Further proof that as a writer, Darwyn Cooke is a hell of an artist…”
- Johnny Bacardi, making me consider that I maybe should have read his review of the Justice League: New Frontier Special before I bought it.
“Just as the literary acceptance of comics began with the infamous New York Times mag cover story, the Times may have officially made this THE DAY COMICS JUMPED THE SHARK. The evidence? A FASHION spread … on Indie cartoonists taken at Splat”
- Heidi MacDonald, causing comic pundits everywhere to get out their snark measuring instruments in order to adequately survey the aesthetic property damage.
“Sometimes I find myself rediscovering stories I haven’t read in over thirty years, but often I find I’m enjoying stories from that I would never have read as a six year old.”
- George Rears, appreciating a benefit of his quest to buy every comic released around the same month he bought his first comic book (The Flash 228 [July 1974])
One Year Ago
“I don’t think much of the cream of the crop of 1970s superhero comic books in terms of their being entertaining, well-crafted and meaningfully humane narratives. At best they’re Starsky and Hutch, not Mean Streets. An off-episode of Starsky and Hutch. An off-episode of Starsky and Hutch with the Antonio Fargas scenes spliced out.”
- Tom Spurgeon, using “Starksy and Hutch” and “Mean Streets” in the same sentence to great effect.
June 23rd, 2012 at 4:17 am
Nice weblog right here! Additionally your website a lot up fast! What web host are you using? Can I am getting your affiliate hyperlink to your host? I wish my web site loaded up as quickly as yours lol